She hurried up the stairs and rezzed the lock on the door of her apartment. Otis hissed a warning and sleeked out, but it was too late. She had the door open and she was in the front hall.
Otis tensed to spring.
“No,” she said. “Not yet. Please.”
Otis obeyed, but his body was shivering with battle-ready tension. A lot of teeth and all four eyes were showing.
Veronica appeared at the other end of the short hall. No makeup. No leather. She was wearing a bathrobe and slippers. Her long red hair was in a tangle. Her eyes glittered with barely controlled panic.
“Veronica?” Lucy whispered.
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” Veronica said. Her voice shook a little, but she pulled herself together. “I got out of bed because I heard someone moving around in here. I knew you and Gabriel had left. I thought maybe you’d come home early because Luxton fired you. If that was the case, I knew you’d want to talk. When I knocked on your door, she answered.”
Cassandra Keele moved into sight. She had a mag-rez pointed at Veronica’s head.
“Come in and close the door,” she said. “Lock it. Control the rat, or I’ll put a bullet in Ms. Star’s brain.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“You were Westover’s client,” Lucy said. “You were so good at staying in the shadows, he never realized you were the one who was using him.”
“I’m the one who discovered the pool of liquid crystal in the Ghost City,” Cassandra said. “I come from a long line of prospectors who have a special talent for locating crystals. I’m good. But I didn’t want to spend my life in the Underworld. Decided it would be more interesting to become a private investigator. But you know how it is with talent.”
“The more you try to ignore it, the more it calls to you.”
“Exactly. When Coppersmith Mining opened up the Ghost City, I started hearing rumors of amazing discoveries. I couldn’t resist taking a look around down there. I found my own portal. Pitney figured out how to create a key for me.”
“You discovered the liquid crystal.”
“A whole lake of the stuff. I couldn’t stake a claim, because Coppersmith has all the mining rights, but they haven’t even begun to chart that sector. It’s going to take years to explore and map the territory around the Ghost City. They never knew I was there.”
“How did you know the crystal was a source of power?”
“I could sense it, of course. That’s part of my talent. The problem is that there’s a massive tornado anchored to the lake. I managed to extract a small amount of the crystal. but it was just too risky to continue. The tornado is getting stronger by the day. I hired Westover anonymously and offered him a cut of the profits if he could find someone to handle the weather at the lake.”
“He went after me,” Lucy said.
“He screwed up. After that, he brought in a couple of outsiders. The first one was pretty good. She managed to fill up four canisters. She died when she went back for more. The next channeler disappeared into the lake. He didn’t bring out a single canister.”
“How did you find Preston Trenchard?”
“Everyone thought he was crazy, but I had read some of the articles he had written for the para-physics journals before he was fired from the lab where he worked. I knew he was the one I needed. I had Westover take a sample to him. Trenchard understood the potential of the liquid crystal immediately. He said it had the power to suppress standard rez-amber. He claimed he knew how to build a weapon that could shut down an entire city. I offered to finance his experiments.”
“But things kept going wrong.”
“Because of you.” Cassandra’s voice rose. “Obviously I made a serious error in judgment by letting you live. I should have had Westover take care of you when the medics took you to the clinic. But he convinced me there would be even more trouble if you died.”
“Why did you come here today?” Lucy asked. “Under other circumstances, I would have been working.”
“Yes.” Cassandra’s voice grew shrill. “You were supposed to be working. I came here to get rid of you and Jones.”
“How did you imagine you would be able to do that? Okay, maybe you could have gotten rid of me, but a Guild boss? Westover and his whole team of mercenaries couldn’t handle that job.”
Cassandra gave her a savage smile. “I brought you a lovely bottle of wine. It’s on your kitchen counter. A gift from your parents.”